Introducing ARTS1000

Article by Dr Jayde Cahir and Sonia Saddiqui

Using the DDI methodology, the Faculty of Arts has been busy creating ARTS1000 Humanities and the World through a collaborative process involving students, academics and industry partners.

Here’s a snapshot of what we’ve been up to over the last nine months…

We began with establishing the overarching aims of the intended foundation unit. To this end, we referred to findings published in a November 2018 Deloitte commissioned report that outlined the value of the Humanities and Social Sciences in enabling social and economic progress.

The challenge for Humanities and Social Sciences in Higher Education has been to identify valuable transferable skills and to develop courses that enable students to acquire and demonstrate these skills. An additional aim was to equip students with the confidence to articulate the acquisition of these transferable skills when seeking employment following graduation.  

In November of the same year, the DDI project team facilitated a workshop with industry and students to scope the type of transferable skills attained when completing a Bachelor of Arts. Representatives from Macquarie Group, Deloitte, Hays Recruitment, Commonwealth Bank and Allens, were involved in this initial workshop. Our industry representatives shared the type of skills they prioritised when employing graduates, all of which were applicable to the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Our student representatives were also involved in co-designing this unit through mapping the transferable skills they obtained while studying ou current Bachelor of Arts degree. The findings from these workshops are being used to shape this foundation unit as well as current literature on implementing career development learning.

The following month, a workshop was held with academics within the Faculty as well as representatives from MUIC, MQ Career and Employment Service, PACE and the Library, to write the unit description, learning outcomes and proposed assessment tasks for the unit. During this workshop, we also discussed possible approaches to learning and teaching, designing assessments and providing feedback.

Collectively, these DDI workshops established ARTS1000 as an interdisciplinary introduction to the main approaches, methods and issues in the study of the Humanities and Social Sciences.

In April 2019, we facilitated a DDI Workshop where we presented the unit description, learning outcomes and proposed assessment tasks drafted in the previous workshop. With the support of academics across the Faculty, we began to map the students’ learning journey through the unit. In this workshop we agreed that Team-based Learning was an apt pedagogical approach to enable students to grapple with real-world scenarios, and illustrate the ways in which the Humanities and Social Sciences can make significant contributions in addressing complex contemporary problems. Following this workshop, an iLearn ‘shell’ unit, ARTS1000 Humanities and the World, was created, outlining the structure of the proposed foundation unit.

This month, we will again be facilitating a workshop with industry representatives to collaboratively develop one of the real-world scenarios to be used in Team-based Learning. We will continue to engage with industry representatives to develop authentic scenarios that will benefit our students’ foundational learning experience in the new Bachelor of Arts.

Are you interested? Get in touch with FoA DDI Workshop Project Managers to discuss how you can be involved in a future ARTS1000 DDI Workshop. DDI Workshop Project Managers: Dr Jayde Cahir (jayde.cahir@mq.edu.au) and Sonia Saddiqui (sonia.saddiqui@mq.edu.au).

If you would like more information about the future development of the Bachelor of Arts core units, please contact Associate Professor Panos Vlachopoulos, Associate Dean Quality and Standards, Faculty of Arts (panos.vlachopoulos@mq.edu.au)

References

Deloitte Access Economics (2017), Soft Skills for Business Success, Commissioned Report for DeakinCo. https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/au/Documents/Economics/deloitte-au-economics-deakin-soft-skills-business-success-170517.pdf

Deloitte Access Economics (2018), The Value of the Humanities. Commissioned Report for Macquarie University. https://www2.deloitte.com/au/en/pages/economics/articles/value-humanities.html